Spectral Taxonomy is a series of paper-based sculpture installations exploring ecological grief and the temporal rhythms of coral bleaching. Through layered lamellae structures, the works translate environmental data into fragile material systems where erosion, absence, and repetition become visual language.

VEIL OF ERASURE

 Spectral Taxonomy – Marine Elegies, 2025
Paper sculpture installation
170 × 154 × 7.5 cm Framed
37 kg (with glass)
Unique work

Veil of Erasure received a Merit Award at the Luxembourg Art Prize 2025,
recognized for its capacity to transform environmental data into material elegy.

VEIL OF MEMORY

Spectral Taxonomy – Marine Elegies, 2025
Paper sculpture installation
55 × 55 × 7.5 cm Framed
5.2 kg (without glass) | 7.3 kg (with glass)
Unique work

Liminal Specimens

Fifteen laminae functioning as specimen studies within Spectral Taxonomy – Marine Elegies

LAMINA V

BRINE SKETCH

Salt acting as author, leaving marks already in the process of fading.

Spectral Taxonomy – Marine Elegies, 2026
Paper sculpture installation
30 × 30 × 5 cm Framed
2 kg (with glass)
Unique work

LAMINA X

PALE CHROMA

Colour destabilising as it withdraws from structural support.

Spectral Taxonomy – Marine Elegies, 2026
Paper sculpture installation
30 × 30 × 5 cm Framed
2 kg (with glass)
Unique work

Spectral Taxonomy – Marine Elegies

Spectral Taxonomy investigates coral reef collapse through paper sculpture and installation – transforming environmental data into material elegy.

The series explores a central question: How do we document what’s disappearing? Where scientific archives pursue objectivity, this work embraces fragility as methodology. Each piece undergoes processes that mirror reef stress – tea staining, water damage, embossing, strategic tearing. The paper becomes surrogate coral: bleached, scarred, structurally compromised yet somehow still standing.

Documentation as lament. The archive carries the wound it records.

Working primarily with archival paper (Hahnemühle Britannia, vellum), I create laminar structures that echo coral architecture while embracing material vulnerability. My approach is informed by the Japanese concept of Kami (紙/神) – where “paper” and “divine spirit” share the same word – treating paper not as neutral substrate but as substance that carries transformation itself.

The series title reflects dual meaning: Spectral suggests both ghosted absence (bleached reefs) and scientific measurement (spectral analysis). Taxonomy references biological classification – the systematic naming of species before they vanish. Together: a catalog of ghosts, an archive aware of its own obsolescence.

Works range from monumental installations documenting temporal acceleration (months between mass bleaching events) to intimate studies examining individual damaged sheets. All share pale palettes – whites, creams, subtle blues – with crimson backing functioning as both wound and warning.

Spectral Taxonomy creates contemplative space where beauty and catastrophe coexist without resolution. The work offers no redemptive narrative – only evidence of transformation, rendered tangible through materials that carry their own mortality.

As mass coral bleaching events compress from centuries to decades, these paper architectures function as temporal witness: urgent yet quiet, data-driven yet elegiac, precise yet fragile.

What remains when reefs bleach? Ghosted structures. Calcium skeletons. Archive as elegy.

Spectral Taxonomy is part of Material Elegies – an ongoing practice investigating loss across personal and ecological scales through vulnerable materials and deliberate witness.